Wish You Were Gone(4)

“It’s okay,” Emma said. “Lizzie’s here.”

Gray’s jaw tightened. “I’ll come.”

A flash of headlights blinded her as a car pulled into her driveway. Gray’s eyes darted to the clock, and only then did her blood run cold.

“Actually,” Gray said, steeling her voice. “Emma, just hang in there. I’m going to have to call you back.”





HUNTER


2:15 a.m.

23 hours before the accident

The glass was everywhere. Hunter couldn’t understand how there could be so much of it. The hole in the window was relatively small—about the size of a baseball—but the blast zone seemed to cover the entire kitchen. Carefully, he swept up tiny shards and particles into the dustpan, then took a wet paper towel and went over the floor tiles square by square, snagging up the teeniest bits in the folds. This was not the first time he’d cleaned up broken glass.

Once he was certain the floor was safe for bare feet, he checked the clock. It was almost three in the morning. School in five hours. That was going to be brutal. He tossed the paper towel and used masking tape and the flap from a cardboard box he’d found in the hall closet to cover the hole. Then he got to work on the countertop.

At least his mom was a clean freak. If this had happened at his friend Marc’s house, he never would have found all the glass. Marc’s mom ran an online gluten-free bakery out of her kitchen and their counters were always covered in test recipes, cookbooks, chopped fruit and vegetables, and half-unpacked grocery bags. This task would have taken Marc hours. But then, Hunter couldn’t imagine Marc’s crunchy, Toms-wearing, ukulele-playing father launching a coffee mug through a window.

You’re the only person who can be you, so be the best you you can be, Marc’s dad had once said to Hunter.

Standing now in the middle of the darkened kitchen, Hunter tried to remember whether his own father had ever said anything like that to him. He was sure that he had—a memory hovered at the very edge of his mind—a Little League field, the orange dirt on his cleats—but he couldn’t make himself remember the words.

Hunter was wiping off the last countertop when he heard a footfall on the basement stairs. His father’s footsteps were unmistakable. When he was sober, they were heavy. When he was drunk, it sounded like a giant was rumbling up the stairs.

Fi… fie… fo… fum…

His father had been downstairs in his museum—his sanctuary—for the last three hours. So long that Hunter had assumed he’d passed out down there. The museum was full of every piece of sports memorabilia his father had ever collected—everything from framed, signed jerseys to commemorative bobbleheads to books full of ripped tickets from back when tickets were still printed and ripped. It was his father’s favorite room in the house, everything professionally displayed with custom shelves and lighting, and he and his sister weren’t allowed to enter without him there. A rule that Hunter had broken many times.

Something glinted in the corner of Hunter’s vision. Ignoring the nervous jackhammering of his heart at his father’s slow approach, he crouched to sweep it up. He was still on the floor when the basement door shuddered open—a product of it being pushed and kicked at the same time. Hunter held his breath. Silence. His father could move down the hall toward the living room and stairs, or he could come toward the kitchen—toward the light.

He chose the light.

Hunter’s strong legs shook as he rose to his full height and his father entered the room. His dad looked surprised to see him there. There was a baseball bat in his hands. Hunter’s teeth clenched. He held the dustpan so tightly that the ridges in the rubber handle cut into his palm. The two men stared at each other. Hunter had to remind himself that this was what he was now. Eighteen years old. A man.

He hadn’t felt like a man earlier when he’d chased his father across the front driveway as his father chased his little sister—hair streaming, guttural screaming. He’d felt like a confused, desperate little boy trying to stop a charging bull. He saw his hand come down on his father’s shoulder. Saw the wildness in his dad’s eyes as he turned on Hunter and shoved him, full strength, into the holly bushes. Hunter could still feel the blow of his father’s hands on his chest. There were scrapes up and down his arms and on one side of his face from the sharp holly leaves.

His dad had never pushed him before. Had never touched him in anger—not once.

This all went through his mind as he stared his father down now, terrified, livid, and sort of hoping for a fight. He was very aware of the bat, but he refused to look away first. He would hold this man’s gaze all night if he had to.

Just say you’re sorry, Hunter thought. Say it won’t happen again. Beg for my forgiveness. Do. It.

But then, something shifted in his father’s face. He looked away, shook his head, and shuffled off toward the stairs. Hunter heard him stop on the first step, brace his unsteady weight, and then start the climb. A second later, he heard a clatter. The sound of a wooden bat, bouncing across a wooden floor.

His chest filled with pride as he turned back toward his task and then, the suspense broken, he started to cry. One of these days, his father was going to kill someone. Of this he was suddenly sure.





LIZZIE


There was no way she was ever going to make it through this day. Why, in the name of all deities everywhere, had she ever decided to open a retail store? As a teenager and college student, Saturday had been a sacred day to Lizzie. Saturday meant sleeping until noon, eating sugar cereal with too much milk in front of bad TV, lazing under the closest tree with a book of poetry or philosophy or an Archie comic or playing Frisbee with her brothers and their dog. Then lazy dinners, long drives, and parties and oblivion.